Coming Out Blind

Blindness is a visible disability which is of course ironic in a hundred ways. Picture it: a blind woman comes down the street sweeping her white cane before her. She’s just an ordinary person who can’t see but her apparent lack of sight is extraordinary. She’s a cane wielding deviant, outside the flaneur’s contract, the agreed upon “look at me” public sport of open space that began with the industrial revolution and disposable income. After the industrial revolution everyone could join the Easter parade. Everyone could buy something deemed fashionable from the Sears catalogue. And all public space became a proscenium arch; every street became a cafe. The flaneur’s contract holds that everyone wants to be seen, everyone wants to be glanced at. The degree to which you’re good at the sport rests in your capacity to look at someone and not be seen looking, or, for advanced flaneurs, to look and be known for it. There are many variants. But not where blindness is concerned.

The first presumption is that the blind woman can’t stare back and won’t be aware she’s being assessed by the throng. “Throngsters” I like to call them—able bodied people who openly stare at the disabled. They think there’s power in numbers—they belong to the majority. They think their job is to stare at the wheelchair man; the autistic girl, the boy with cerebral palsy. Their staring says many things. You are not like me. You should go someplace else. You are a project for God. You make me uncomfortable. You are like someone else I know, who, despite my best liberal convictions, I feel sorry for. Above all else—you’re not sufficiently fashionable my friend. You’re busting my Throngster Flaneur. 

Of course disabled people know its worse than this. Much of the staring is cruel, accompanied by a moue of superiority. Or disgust. There are architechtonics of disapproval and of power. The throngster thinks his eye beams are like Superman’s X-ray vision, as he sees through the disabled woman he’s also shrinking her; its overtly aggressive—as I categorize you I further reduce you. Its a tiny tiny blind woman that you are. Can you feel it?

The latter question is the fun one since blind people know a ton of stuff—many can actually see something, though not all—and no matter what, we all know you’re staring at us.

Tap tap tap. Cane on sidewalk. Stare stare stare. Teenage boy wearing New York Yankees jersey and popping bubble gum. He stares at the blind girl. She’s not really a girl, she’s a full grown woman, but all disabled people are instantaneously infantilized by throngsters even the very old. Anyway, the blind woman knows she’s being stared at. Maybe she can see him up close. Maybe not. It doesn’t matter. Sighted people do a little hitch when they stare at the blind. Like a baseball infielder who’s about to bobble a routine grounder. They pause for a second. If you’re blind you can actually hear the screws in their necks. Tap tap. Hitch. Squeak. And staring, voila.

Every minute of being blind is a “coming out” and this is true for all visible disabilities. Sophisticated blind people are seasoned in the arts of disruption. I’ve actually pointed with my white cane, saying, “I know you’re staring at me, I can feel it. Didn’t your mother tell you that’s rude?” Street performance helps. Sometimes it helps a lot. Once while riding a commuter bus in Columbus, Ohio I was approached by a woman who announced loudly that she’d like to pray for me. I was an obvious mark, being a cripple and all, and I was wearing a business suit (having just come from an actual business meeting) but it was likely the Jesus Lady meant I was merely looking for a job. The throngster stare is always a reducing X-ray. It can reduce you in myriad ways. JL likely believed I was living a disabled life because of some moral failing (mine) and it was from a past life (metempsychosis) and right there on the proscenium bus we would together cast out the giggly snakes of blindness by getting down on our knees and wailing among the college students with their backpacks and Ohio State Buckeyes sweatshirts.

I told her (loudly) that she could most certainly pray for me but only if I could pray for her and all the people on this sad, mortal bus, for indeed everyone aboard had genetic defects, probable diseases, social sufferings, had been victimized by parents, lovers, or strangers—I went on and on, my voice rising, my contractual empathy pushing the envelope of the number 6 bus. And Jesus Lady got off at the next stop and several people applauded.

If you’re blind every day is coming out day. But the proper motto is, as Christopher Hitchens once said of Auden’s relationship to Chester Kallman: “Its better to be blatant than latent.”